


And The Walls Keep Tumbling Down

by insanelycooljk



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blood, Gen, Mostly I just wanted a place to put it, Please feel free to rip it to shreds, Sickness, This is trash, Torture, Trauma, and never will be, anywho, major pain, mostly it's just a little blurb I wrote like three years ago, not finished, our children have problems, poor shiro my dude, space sickness to boot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 17:42:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14025345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insanelycooljk/pseuds/insanelycooljk
Summary: Shiro can't believe that he's been gone from them for two months. What little sleep Shiro gets between fights is filled with nightmares - Pidge coughs, Hunk and Lance scream, Keith's strangled voice begs, Please, please, don't hurt them -Shiro would give anything to be trapped on that Galra ship instead of them.(Title from Bastille’s Pompeii, the song that was playing on a loop as I wrote this.) (Memories are in italics.)(Will not be finished.)





	And The Walls Keep Tumbling Down

_ (Memories can be confusing and out of order, but they are crucial to understanding the present.) _

  
  


The Galra guards are not careful with him as they drag him down the dimly lit hallway. Their metal boots clang with each mechanical step they take, pulling him by his arms towards the cell block door.   
  
Lance fights back yelps of pain each time he stumbles, the residual shocks from his recent bout of torture still ebbing out of his system.

 

**_Where is the Black Lion?_ ** _ Zarkon hisses, his witch cackling softly by his side. Lance sobs despite his best efforts, because it hurts too much and it's more than he can take. _

_ Unconsciousness knocks, and he welcomes it with open arms. But one blast of the witch’s lightning, and he's wide awake, ready to scream for another hour. _

  
The door to his cell slides open with a touch of a Galra hand, and he's thrown in. The familiar clang of the door shutting follows soon after. He struggles to stand, making sure that his cellmate - Keith, of all people - is still there. He is, and Lance sighs in relief.

  
**_Great, I'm stuck in a cell with Mullet, over here,_ ** _ he screams through the opening. He tries not to let his panic bleed through his words.  _ **_You better let me out if you don't want us to tear each other apart!_ ** _   
_ _ In the end, it wasn't Keith who socked him across the jaw, it was the very annoyed guard. Lance learned very quickly that his mouth would only get him in trouble. _

  
The cell is black, and there is barely any light filtering in through the small, rectangular hole in the door. Lance hisses as he gets up on his knees, but the searing  pain that streaks through his chest tells him that’s all the farther he’s going to go.   
  
The cell where Hunk and Pidge are held is eerily silent, but he strains his ears just in time to hear a muffled cough - Pidge - and a hushed whisper - Hunk. It's enough to assure him that they're alive, but he has no idea whether or not they’re okay. 

He has no idea whether or not  _ he’s _ okay.

Lance sighs, wincing as he resigns himself to lying down on the cold stone floor. It’s not that he isn’t used to it by now, it’s just that he’s already shivering, and the floor tends to suck all of the warmth out of his body. 

 

_ He’s out of his lion and they’ve taken their bayards, and Lance yelps as the commander shoves him into a small room with a gruff order to  _ **_change, and quickly._ ** _ Two minutes later, he’s out of his armour and squeezed into a thin black prison outfit.  _ **_I wish I’d thought to wear my jacket, it’s sorta cold in here,_ ** _ he whispers to Keith, whose hands are shaking. Lance pretends not to notice.  _ **_So, how are we gonna get out?_ **

_ He knows things are bad when Keith turns to look at him, and all the hope has already drained from his eyes. _

 

The mission had gone terribly wrong, Lance thinks, not for the first time. Right on cue, Blue reaches out with her mind and gives him the mental equivalent of a hug, soothing his pain for only a moment before she's forced to withdraw. Haggar has violated the Paladins’ mental bonds with the lions more times than he'd like to remember, and the lions have learned to shut themselves off to avoid being controlled.

  
The Red, Blue, Yellow, and Green lions are currently locked up in the Galra ship hangar, and none of the paladins knew where Shiro was. Lance hopes he'd gotten away.

  
  
**_Go!_ ** _ he screams, as the tractor beam catches Hunk and Pidge.  _ **_Don't let him get the Black Lion! We'll be fine,_ ** _ he finishes, and his voice cracks as he's caught in the beam. The lions are roaring, and the paladins are yelling, and Shiro's sobbing fizzles out into nothing as the Black Lion follows the Castle through the wormhole. _

 

He closes his eyes, trying not to feel the hot water trickling down his face. He's gotten so good at holding back his tears that he's almost forgotten how to cry.

No he hasn't, he thinks bitterly to himself, and claps a hand over his mouth too late. The soft gasp - the beginning of a sob - has already left his mouth.

 

_ He sees the reason for Keith’s despair as soon as they're shoved into the main room. Haggar, the witch who replaced Shiro’s arm, grins at them from across the room. The great Zarkon himself looms above them, purple eyes glinting.  _ **_Leave the girl,_ ** _ he growls, and Pidge bravely doesn't let herself call out for them as they're herded out and into their cells.  _

_ But she screams very loudly later, and Lance curls up and buries his head in his knees. It's not enough to block it out. _

  
Keith's hand wraps around his, entwining their fingers, and Lance (after getting over the shock of sudden human contact) tightens his grip. Violet eyes stare at him from the deep shadows on Keith’s face, and Lance looks away quickly.   
A long time ago, he would have found this weird and strangely uncomfortable, but Keith and Lance's relationship had far progressed from frenemies.

  
  
_ Keith’s eyes fill with worry as they hover above him. His vision hazes in and out, and he’s vaguely aware of the pain-induced tears blurring his already spotty view.  He tries to smile, but his mouth won’t work, and his heart pounds twice as fast as it should. _

**_Note_ ** _ , he finally slurs out, his hand finding Keith’s on the ground. The Red Paladin jerks, but doesn’t move away.  _ **_Electric shock therapy can be dangerous in large doses._ **

__   
  
"Lance?" Keith whispers, and the Blue Paladin starts out of his thoughts.   
  
"Yeah?" He's quiet - last time the Galra caught them talking, Lance couldn't move his arm without screaming for what seemed like forever.   
  
"It's been two months." Keith's voice is raspy, and Lance thinks back to a few days ago when the Galra guard slammed him into the wall by his throat, choking him until he turned blue. The bruises haven't faded at all since the incident. "I saw the date on a new pipe in the engine room."   
  
It takes a few seconds for Keith's proclamation to set in.   
  
"Two months?" he whispers back, hoping his voice isn't shaking as much as he thinks it is. "That means it's - um - "   
  
"July," Keith finishes. "July 27. If I'm right, tomorrow's your birthday."   
  
Lance doesn't say anything, for once shocked into silence.   
  
He thinks back to the first day, when he’d been so sure that Shiro and Allura and Coran would come bursting in through the side of the ship and rescue them all.

And now, it’s been two months. His hope is gone. Shiro would’ve come by now - he wouldn’t have let them suffer like this - would he? Shiro had said it himself - he loved them like his own children, and he’d never abandon them to the place of his nightmares.

But it’s been two months, with no hope of rescue.   
  
And his birthday tomorrow, no less.   
  
He's going to spend his birthday suffering in space, millions of miles from his family and his friends - not knowing if he'd live to see the rest of the day, let alone another year.   
  
Keith seems to sense the oncoming tears, and carefully (and a tad bit awkwardly) pulls him closer, pressing their foreheads together.   
  
Keith has never been good at the aspect of friendship, but God bless his heart, he's tried harder than ever the past two months.   
  
Lance buries his head in Keith's shoulder, and cries as loud as he dares.

  
  
~

  
  
Pidge is sick.

 

She was coming down with something even before the disastrous mission, and her captivity isn’t making anything better. It doesn’t help that her illness seems to be all the common bugs and ailments known to humanity crushed into one space virus.   
  
Her skin burns, but she's freezing, and she lives in a constant state of misery. She shakes uncontrollably, and can't seem to stop her nose from running every five seconds. Her lungs ache from coughing so much - deep, raspy ones that shake her whole frame - and her stomach feels like it’s going to eject out of her body with every breath she takes. Nausea and a pounding headache chip away at her strength, and her ears are starting to hurt.   
  
She thinks that if she doesn't get better soon, she'll cough up a lung, die, and be out of this hell hole.   
  
Hunk sits forlornly on the floor next to her, his cheeks gaunt and his body smaller than she's ever seen. They haven't fed him much since they got here. Not that the rest of them have been given three course meals, she snorts to herself.   
  
And then she starts coughing, and Hunk is attending to her - patting her on the back, hushing her softly.

  
He doesn't deserve this, she thinks. She manages a quiet 'Thanks' before she's coughing again.   
  
Hunk has become her personal nurse - making her as comfortable as possible and using some of his precious, limited water to cool her forehead - a futile attempt to take down her fever.

 

**_Help her,_ ** _ Hunk screams out the small opening.  _ **_She’s sick, she -_ **

_ He cuts off suddenly as the door opens, and Pidge curls up and tries not to cry as the guard backhands him across the face, sending him crashing to the floor.  _ **_Stupid Yellow Lion,_ ** _ she thinks,  _ **_you don’t need to take the hits for everyone._ ** _ But he does. Every time. _

__   
  
She miserably sniffs, carefully lying down on the stone floor. She curls in on herself, trying to retain as much warmth as she can.   
  
Hunk lies down next to her, and she half-heartedly tries to shoo him away, protesting that he can't catch whatever horrid space illness she has, but he ignores her, and soon his breath is evened out and he's asleep. His body heat is a welcome presence, until her temperature rises again, and it’s suddenly way too warm. So she scoots a little closer to the wall, until she starts to shiver again. So she sighs, and decides to just stay in her original position.   
  
She resigns herself to another restless night. She never gets more than two hours of sleep at a time, and she is often woken up by feverish dreams.   
  
Nightmares are a better term.

  
This night passes in a terrible silence, and when she hears Lance yelp as he's thrown back into his cell she lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding.

  
Her sleep tonight is fitful, and she dreams of Matt and of Shiro and of her father. It doesn't matter what she does - she can never find them, and they die before she can save them.   
  
She wakes up to the bell on what she assumes is the next day and shakily stands, suppressing her coughs as best as she can.   
  
Hunk feels her forehead, and the frown on his face tells her nothing is better.   
  
She didn't expect it to be. Galra medicine consists of "Survive until you get so bad we have no choice but to shove you in a healing pod until you're better". Rinse and repeat.

 

_ Keith screams, and it echoes through the small, hot, engine room. Pidge looks over, and her stomach lurches even more than usual as she sees him curled up on the ground, a jagged white piece of bone slicing out of his arm. The guard responsible for the injury curses, and hauls him up, ignoring Keith’s howls as his broken arm is jolted. _

_ The next day, he’s not there, and Lance tells her he didn’t come back to the cell. Halfway through the day, Keith stumbles in, arm fully healed, and no one speaks of the incident again.  _

  
  
As they're led out of their cells and into the hallway, she notices Lance leaning heavily on Keith before they're ripped apart and forced into a single line.   
  
She notes the way his fingers spasm randomly, and she sighs - the electrical torture was her least favorite.   
  
At least he's alive.   
  
The march to their daily work is long and she feels faint by the time they get there. She is set to work wiping the dirt off of the piping. She almost trips as she goes through the door, and she hides her cough as they laugh at her.   
  
The heat of the engine room definitely isn't helping her feverish state - she's dizzy and tired. At one point during the day, she wanders too close to a power bolt and screams as a burst of purple electricity nearly blasts off the side of her face.   
  
Keith drops whatever he was doing to catch her as she trips and falls, and she winces for him as the lash strikes his back. He stumbles, but keeps his hold on her.   
  
The Galra scream at them in their native language that they can't understand - and Keith makes sure that she's okay and upright before slowly bending down (she can't help but feel guilty for the wince of pain on his face) and finishing his job.   
  
She goes back to wiping off a pipe filled with purple quintessence, and wishes - not for the first time - that her brother were here to hold her and make everything better.

 

**_What the Garrison doesn’t know won’t hurt ‘em,_ ** _ Matt winks, and she laughs. She falls asleep on his lap, staring up at the stars from the rooftop. _

 

She fights back tears and tries to ignore Hunk's yelp from across the room. He tries his best one hundred percent of the time, but the Galra can find mistakes in anyone's work.   
  
She wonders if this is what her father is going through - and she wonders if Matt is still with him.   
  
She wonders if they're even alive, and she starts, horrified at the lone tear falling down her face, and can't hold back her next bout of coughing.

  
She tries to muffle it, but the Galra have heard - and after they've lashed her across the face for weakness, they laugh, and she coughs again, quietly.   
  
If there is a hell, she thinks, her feverish brain mesmerized by the blood dripping from the new cut across her cheek, she's living in it.

  
  
~

  
  
Shiro is exhausted.   
  
It's been non-stop for the past two months - Zarkon somehow has a way to track the Castle, and Shiro has to fight off hordes of Galra on his own. The Castle defenses are almost completely shot from fighting so actively, and that's not even mentioning the failing life support systems.

  
He barely gets any sleep, having to resurrect himself completely every five hours, ready and full of energy to fight another battle. Coran and Allura are just as exhausted - he may have a lion to pilot, but they have a massive ship to fly.   
  
It doesn't help that morale is low.   
  
What little sleep Shiro gets between fights is filled with nightmares -  _ Pidge coughs, Hunk and Lance scream, Keith's strangled voice begs  _ **_Please, please, don't hurt them -_ ** ****_  
_   
Sometimes, Shiro despises the paladin bond.   
  
He's first and foremost connected to the Black Lion, but there's an underlying connection to the other's lions too. And the other lions are connected to their paladins.   
  
Their thoughts, feelings, and emotions can bleed over onto him if the connection is strong enough.   
  
He tries to distance himself - tries to think about anything but his friends, trapped in the same place he fought for a year to escape -

  
  
**_My Champion,_ ** _ Haggar purrs, ignoring his shouts of pain as she welds the chunk of metal to his shoulder.  _ **_You shall be my Champion._ **

 

  
Shiro shakes his head. No time for flashbacks. No time for thinking about how scared they all must be. No time for thinking about how the lions call to him every single waking hour, their panic and despair at their paladin's pain almost palpable.

  
  
**_My little one,_ ** _ Blue suddenly screams in his head, Black veering off course due to Shiro's flinch.  _ **_Please, Black, come, save my little one -_ ** __   
_   
_ __ Red is just as loud, but the terrified silence from Yellow and Green is even worse than the yells of the others.

 

  
Shiro tries to restrain from slapping himself. They're in the middle of a wormhole, Allura drained of energy from the previous fight, Coran frantically fixing the defenses as well as he can. From the frustrated noises the Altean is making, Shiro can guess how well it's going.   
  
Allura groggily looks over at him, kaleidoscope eyes full of worry. "Shiro?" Her voice is so quiet he can barely hear her. "Are you hurt?"   
  
No. But she looks rather terrible. Her normally tan skin is pale and wan, and the markings under her eyes have faded from light pink to almost white.   
  
He smiles for her benefit. "No. I'm fine."   
  
He's fine. He has only a few bruises and scrapes from his battles, and otherwise he's fine.

  
  
_ He wakes up in a cold sweat, Hunk's agonized yells echoing in his ears. Shiro can't help it - he breaks down and cries, wishing he was there instead of them.  _

_ He'd do anything to be there instead of them. _

 

  
His face crumples, and a wave of guilt crashes over him. He sits down heavily on his chair, and his arm strikes the metal with a clang.   
  
Shiro feels personally responsible for the paladins' capture. He's the Black Paladin - the leader. If anyone, he should've been the one sacrificing himself for his team. But he ran away.

  
  
**_You never run, my Champion_ ** _ , Haggar says, laughing as he writhes under her lightning.  _ **_You never run, especially not from me._ **   
  
_ An image of Keith in the same position bleeds through Red's connection the day after he remembers the original, and Shiro has to leave the room, trying not to have a full blown panic attack. _

__   
  
He feels a tug at the edge of his mind - and he stiffens.  **_Not now, Black,_ ** he thinks, but it's too late.

 

  
_ Lance cries into his sleeve when the guards aren't looking. It's his birthday today. Keith winces with every step he takes, the pain radiating from a deep cut in his calf making Shiro want to vomit.  Pidge curls up in her cell and coughs, her fever eating away at her strength. Hunk tries and fails to ignore the pain from his recent torture session and wipes Pidge's forehead with the last of their water. _

__   
  
Shiro can't stop the images and noises flooding his mind and he can't stop the scream that tears out of his throat.   
  
Allura and Coran's worried shouts fade away into background noise.   
  
His lion roars somewhere in his mind, and it's official - Shiro can't break the bond. The other four lions are calling to him, strengthening the connection with every passing second. It hurts,  __ it hurts,  but Shiro can't do anything to stop it.

  
The Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue Paladin's combined pain, misery, and anger pours into his head, and he disappears into the mindscape. He's done it before - when he had his "bonding moment" with Black.   
  


_ Hurry, my paladin,  _ Black whispers through the pain.  _ My family can only maintain the astral plane for so long. The witch may return any moment. _

 

Shiro wants to panic and run as soon as he takes stock of his surroundings.

  
It's a Galra ship - the purple lining the walls and filtering into a tiny cell holding two people.

  
  
_ Matt yelps as they're dragged out of the cell and down the hallway. The cheers of the crowd echo in Shiro's ears, and he counts down the minutes until his death in the arena. _

__   
  
He tries his best to shake away the memory. Hunk and Pidge lay side by side on the cold floor, and Shiro kneels beside them.   
  
Hunk looks like he's going to faint any minute, and Pidge looks like one more breath will kill her.   
  
He feels his heart clench, and he places a hand on both of their heads before standing up and moving to phase through the door.   
  
He's shifted over to the cell across the hallway, where Lance is frantically ripping off part of his black prison uniform and wrapping strips of the cloth around Keith's leg. The blood is already soaking through from the wide gash in the flesh.   
  
Keith is unconscious, and Lance curses silently as he tries to stop the bleeding.   
  
"Happy birthday to me," the Blue Paladin whispers through his tears, and Shiro would give the whole world to be in his place instead.   
  
Suddenly, the lions roar again, and Shiro is back in the Castle, coordinates that weren't there before whirling at the forefront of his mind.   
  
"Shiro!" Allura is screaming in his ear, and he jerks back, desperately wiping his eyes.   
  
He certainly wasn't crying.   
  
"I know where they are!" He screeches, not caring as his voice cracks. "I know where they are, we have to find them -"   
  
Allura jerks up, staring at him. "How?"   
  
"Lion," he gasps out. "Please - coordinates -" He stands, only to fall back down. Allura gently puts a hand on his shoulder.   
  
"We will find them, Shiro," she says, but her voice masks the barely hidden undercurrent of hopelessness. She’s given up, he thinks.   
  
Shiro takes one look deep into her eyes, and upon seeing the despair from the past two months collected there, wants nothing more than to rewind time and make sure this never happened.   
  
He distracts himself, as any good leader does, by trying to form a battle strategy in his head.   
  
Coran is barely able to input the coordinates Shiro spews because his hands are shaking so badly.   
  
Allura busies herself with helping Shiro up and running over to pilot the ship through the wormhole. “What happened? You were glowing.”

 

Shiro shakes his head. “Black. She, uh. She connected me to the others.”

 

Allura somehow manages to pale even further. “You could have died, Shiro.”

 

He opens his mouth, but the Castle exits the wormhole with a jerk, sending Allura stumbling a few steps sideways.   
  
The significantly large Galra cruiser looms over them as soon as they exit, and Allura shudders, previous fear and exhaustion returning.   
  
"We need a plan, Shiro," Allura says, her voice shaking.   
  
He doesn't have a plan.   
  
"I have a plan." His voice is horribly unsteady.   
  
He doesn't have a  _ good  _ plan.   
  
"Well? What is it?" Allura asks.   
  
Kill them. Make them pay for what they've done.

  
  
**_Live out my legacy, my Champion_ ** _ , Haggar cackles as he cuts through the opponents in the ring without mercy. _

__   
  
Shiro opens his mouth, forcing out an answer.   
  
"Fight my way through the cruiser and kill every last Galra on that ship."   
  
Allura's face somehow pales even more, but she has no more time to ask about details or try to dissuade him before she has to pull up the particle barrier. The small Galra fighters swarm around the Castle, and Shiro gathers his energy, jumping up from his chair.   
  
Shiro runs into the hangar, jumping in his lion and flying out. His anger for the Galra is higher than it's ever been, and it rises with each moment. He wants nothing more than to hold his friends - no, his family - close, and never let them out of his sight again.

 

He left them - he left them - alone to suffer in the place of his nightmares -

 

His anger somehow flares even higher, and all the pain from earlier battles fades. Black responds better than she ever has, and Shiro feels the familiar tug of the other four lions in his mind.  _ Help us, _ they whisper. Shiro urges Black even faster.   
  
He has no idea what he's doing, but his family is in that ship.   
  
God help the poor souls who happen to get in his way.

 

-   
  
The Alteans in the Castle can only watch as the Black Lion, speeding towards the purple ship,  roars - the sound so full of heartbreak it makes Allura want to cry.

 

**_Allura,_ ** _ Shiro yelps frantically as he stumbles out of Black and seemingly trips into her arms. She looks for the other lions to land in the hangar. They don’t.  _ **_They’re gone, they’re gone, we need to go get them -_ **

_ He’s interrupted by the alarm bell - Zarkon’s fleet has found them - and Shiro quickly launches himself out of her embrace and into his lion again. She watches him purge the pain and grief from his expression and promises herself they’ll find the other paladins in no time. _

_ Three weeks later she breaks down and cries, because she’s so, so, useless - she can’t find them, she can’t help them, and unbeknownst to her, Shiro copies her in the silence of his room. _

  
  
Without any warning, a wave of pure quintessence shoots from the Black Lion, and the Castle shudders as it's hit by the blue energy.   
  
Confusion clouds Allura's tired mind, and she can't quite comprehend the wave of pure energy that rocks her ship. Her vision whitens, everything around her shaking and creaking and groaning, but she doesn’t feel threatened. She feels her tiredness vanish, and her body straighten; before she knows it, she’s standing on the bridge, hands on the pillars that steer the Castle, frozen with confusion. The Black Lion moves in her peripheral vision, jaw blade activated.   
  
Coran recovers first and runs to check the systems, muttering something worriedly under his breath, only to find them all fixed and fully operational. 

 

“What?” He shrieks, pressing buttons and pulling up monitors. “That’s impossible! Even the large dent in the starboard -”

 

“Coran,” Allura whispers. “Look at the cruiser.”

 

The massive ship is dark, save for a few explosions where the Black Lion blasts fighters and holes into the side of it. All the quintessence and energy have been drained from it, leaving it powerless and defenseless.   
  
"I didn't know that the Black Lion could do that," Coran whispers.   
  
Allura stands in shocked silence.   
  
There's another roar, and the four lions shoot out of the side of the ship. They circle happily around the Black Lion, and then all five lions disappear into the bowels of the ship. She hadn’t known they could move without a pilot.

Allura laughs. She laughs until she starts to cry, and there’s a feeling that burns in her chest. She’s hopeful for the first time in months, and she sits, crying on the floor, Coran’s arms around her, and watches the lions dive in and out of the ship.    
  
Allura can only hope that they all come out alive.


End file.
